Plastic recycling just got a little easier in Sitka. On Friday (4-5-24), the city’s public works department announced that number 5 plastic will now be accepted in addition to number 1 and number 2 plastics, and all of these plastics can now be placed in the same container.
Bri Gabel is the city’s sustainability coordinator. She said the city sells recycled materials to offset the cost of solid waste processing – and that more recycling translates to savings for Sitka’s solid waste management.
“After doing a lot of number crunching, we now know that recycling costs about half as much per ton as typical un-recyclable waste,” Gabel said.
Gabel said the goal of the change is to make recycling easier for Sitkans.
“These changes, we hope, will make it easier for people to recycle effectively and correctly in hopes that we can see that number that we ship out as recycling goes up, and the number we ship out as un-recyclable waste goes down,” Gabel said.
Number 5 plastics include yogurt containers and straws. Starting this week, corrugated cardboard and newspapers can also be recycled in the same container.
